Promises to Keep

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald G. Nieman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Institutionalized Racism ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mass Protest

This book examines the influence of race in the development of the US Constitution and argues that African Americans have had a powerful influence creating constitutional rights. It examines the debate over slavery in the Revolutionary era and at the Constitutional Convention and how antislavery advocates, black and white, created constitutional ideas that promoted equality, and their role in ending slavery, securing adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and establishing civil rights protections during Reconstruction. By 1900, southern whites had reversed most of these changes through disfranchisement, segregation, and sharecropping, but African Americans continued to resist. Through organizations like the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People, they challenged segregation, discriminatory criminal justice, lynching, and disfranchisement. After World War II, the civil rights movement triumphed through legal victories (e.g., Brown v. Board of Education), legislation (the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act), and mass protest. Civil rights advocates won victories in the 1970s and 1980s challenging institutionalized racism, even though conservative political strength grew. However, from the 1980s to the 2010s, a conservative Supreme Court invoked color-blind constitutional principles to weaken civil rights protections. Continued economic disparities between blacks and whites as well as the war of drugs and mass incarceration undermined gains made by the civil rights movement, although new social movements like Black Lives Matter continued the quest for equal justice.

Assimilative Tendencies and Curricular Crosscurrents

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Gleason
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
National Organizations ◽  
American Society ◽  
Zoot Suit

Besides its massive impact on the institutional side of Catholic higher education, World War II affected the thinking of Catholic educators. We have already touched upon this dimension in noting how the war and postwar growth required them to expand their horizons and redouble their efforts in research, fundraising, and administration generally. Here we look more closely at how Catholics were affected by the great ideological revival of democracy that accompanied the war. This kind of influence was sometimes explicitly noted by Catholic leaders, as when Archbishop Richard Gushing of Boston called attention to the “neo-democratic mentality of returning servicemen and the university-age generation generally”; others recognized that it created problems since the Catholic church was so widely perceived as incompatible with democracy and “the American way of life.” We shall postpone examination of controversies stemming from this source to the next chapter, turning our attention in this one to the assimilative tendencies reflected in Catholics’ new appreciation for liberal democratic values, and to the major curricular concerns of the era which were also affected by the war. In no area did the democratic revival have a more profound long range effect than in the impetus it lent to the movement for racial equality and civil rights for African Americans. The publication in 1944 of Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma marked an epoch in national understanding of what the book’s subtitle called “the Negro problem and modern democracy.” Myrdal himself stressed the importance of the wartime context, which made it impossible to ignore racial discrimination at home while waging war against Nazi racism. At the same time, increasing black militance, the massive migration of African Americans to northern industrial centers, and above all the great Detroit race riot of 1943—reinforced by the anti-Mexican “Zoot Suit” riots in Los Angeles the same summer—suddenly made the improvement of race relations an imperative for American society as a whole. By the end of the war, no fewer than 123 national organizations were working actively to “reduce intergroup tensions,” and the civil rights movement began a steady advance that led directly to the great judicial and political victories it won in the fifties and sixties.

Latino/a and African American Relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian D. Behnken
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Black And White

African Americans and Latino/as have had a long history of social interactions that have been strongly affected by the broader sense of race in the United States. Race in the United States has typically been constructed as a binary of black and white. Latino/as do not fit neatly into this binary. Some Latino/as have argued for a white racial identity, which has at times frustrated their relationships with black people. For African Americans and Latino/as, segregation often presented barriers to good working relationships. The two groups were often segregated from each other, making them mutually invisible. This invisibility did not make for good relations. Latino/as and blacks found new avenues for improving their relationships during the civil rights era, from the 1940s to the 1970s. A number of civil rights protests generated coalitions that brought the two communities together in concerted campaigns. This was especially the case for militant groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Mexican American Brown Berets, and the Puerto Rican Young Lords, as well as in the Poor People’s Campaign. Interactions among African Americans and Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Cuban/Cuban American illustrate the deep and often convoluted sense of race consciousness in American history, especially during the time of the civil rights movement.

Rooted

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Theresa A. Case
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Black Education ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Stable Family

This chapter establishes the importance of African American shop workers to Texas railroad hubs such as Marshall, Texas, and explores black responses to the 1922 National Railroad Shopmen’s Strike. Newspaper sources reveal that, while some Texas black and white shopmen cooperated in the 1922 walkout, 216 black shopmen in Marshall dramatically broke with the town’s white strikers and the mass of white citizens who supported them: the 216 petitioned the US government and the Texas & Pacific Railway for protection of their return to work against pro-strike violence and intimidation. The chapter contends that the Marshall petitioners found encouragement not only in WWI-era federal policies and civil rights activism but also in the opportunities for black education and stable family life in Marshall. In addition, an earlier rejection of interracial labor solidarity by Marshall’s white shopmen may have played a role. How, in the aftermath of the strike’s defeat, black shopmen and their families related to each other, and to the town’s developing civil rights movement, is a question ripe for investigation.

A Nonnegotiable Right

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-144
Author(s):  
Joseph R. Fitzgerald
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black And White ◽  
White Majority ◽  
March On Washington ◽  
Black Voters

This chapter discusses Richardson’s decision to boycott a referendum vote initiated by white Cambridge residents to maintain segregated public accommodations. She argued that the referendum was a tyrannical action by the white majority over the black minority and that it undermined the latter’s constitutional rights. She advocated a boycott of the vote, and most black voters agreed with her. Black and white critics of the boycott alleged that Richardson behaved irresponsibly by encouraging voters to stay away from the polls, a stance they considered unnecessarily radical and ultimately counterproductive to the national civil rights movement. The chapter also covers Richardson’s participation in the March on Washington and one of the speeches she gave a few weeks before the march in which she outlined in detail her social, economic, and political philosophies concerning black liberation.

Atheism and Agnosticism

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Black Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
World War

Atheism and agnosticism among African Americans is a topic few scholars have explored and even fewer have explored in depth. The fact that roughly 90 percent of African Americans identify as believers, the role of religion in the Civil Rights Movement, and the ubiquity of religion in Black popular culture have made many scholars ignore a vital tradition of Black freethought, which includes atheism and agnosticism as well as nontraditional religious beliefs such as paganism and deism. Despite this scholarly neglect, freethought has been an important component of Black religious, political, and intellectual life from the 19th century to the present. Atheism was present among southern slaves and northern free Blacks as early as 1800 and grew more prominent during the late 19th century, which saw a greatly enhanced freethought movement more generally throughout American society. Key writers of the New Negro Renaissance, including Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, and Claude McKay, were atheists or agnostics, as were African American socialists and communists such as Hubert Harrison and Harry Heywood during the period between World War I and World War II. For these individuals, urban life helped to foster religious skepticism and their artistic, intellectual, and political commitments provided a sense of community with other skeptics that was lacking in rural southern communities or in regions such as the Caribbean, from where many Black migrants came to the United States. Contrary to popular and scholarly portrayals, atheism and agnosticism were likewise important components of the Civil Rights Movement, helping to shape the political thought and literary production of figures such as James Forman, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin. The end of the civil rights era would see the beginning of a new era for Black atheists and agnostics, especially with the institutionalization of Black freethought and the creation of organizations such as African Americans for Humanism, founded in 1989. While the number of Black atheists and agnostics remains a small proportion of the Black population in 2019, that number has doubled since the turn of the 21st century and more and more African Americans feel comfortable identifying as freethinkers.

scholarly journals Resistance to Marginalization in America as Reflected in Kathryn Stockett's 'The Help'

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-18
Author(s):  
Devita Normalisa ◽  
Mohamad Ikhwan Rosyidi
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Black Characters ◽  
The Us

Slavery and racial segregation are two important events that shaped American history. Although slavery had been abolished constitutionally by the Thirteenth Amendment, racial segregation remained existing in some southern states of the US until Civil Rights Movement in 1960s. Racial segregation in the US was regulated by Jim Crow laws which promoted “separate but equal” rules. This situation is reflected in Kathryn Stockett’s novel entitled The Help which mostly portrays the life of black maids under Jim Crow laws in Jackson, Mississippi during 1960s. This study aims to find the resistance to marginalization that is caused by racial discrimination, as well as the factors that underlies the resistance. The method of this study is a qualitative study. The data is analyzed by Gramsci’s hegemony theory and scooped by sociology of literature. Then, the method of data analysis is based on the conflicts of characters in the novel; white and black characters. The Help shows that marginalization of African Americans is created from the opposition that occur because of racial hegemony; the ruling class and the ruled class, the controlling and the controlled, the free ones and the restricted ones, the strong ones and the weak ones, or the voiced ones and the silenced ones. The Help also shows that the resistance to marginalization can be done by producing literature. The resistance of the African Americans happens as a result of oppression and inhumane treatment. It also happens as a result of black people’s consciousness that sees racial discrimination as a system that is full of flaws. Keywords: hegemony, marginalization, racial discrimination, resistance

scholarly journals Never Together: Black and White People in the Postwar Economic Era

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Peter Temin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Black Education ◽  
World War ◽  
White People ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Black Elite

This paper recounts American economic history for 60 years after World War II. The unusual part of this paper is that it focuses on not only the conventional tale, but also recounts what whites did to and for Blacks over this period. It starts from the unhappy experience of a Black American soldier, goes through the prosperity that followed the war and ends with the various changes that happened to the economy after 1970. The Civil Rights Movement is in the middle, and it gave rise to more Black education before racial segregation destroyed their gains. Some Blacks graduated from college and became a Black Elite. Obama’s election showed that the Black Elite could interact with relative equality with educated whites.

The Reception of African American Literature in Prewar and Postwar Japan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiko Nitta
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
The North

Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s gunboat diplomacy provided the Japanese with the first known opportunity to observe a major American performing art inspired by black culture: the minstrel show. The “Ethiopian entertainment,” held on the USS Powhatan, presented “Colored ‘Gemmen’ of the North” and “Plantation ‘Niggas’ of the South” to shogunate officials four times in 1854. While this performance initiated a binational cultural exchange, the 1878 tour of the Fisk Jubilee Singers was an epoch-making event; the group’s successful concerts, given in three cities, offered Japanese audiences their first opportunity to appreciate genuine African-American artistic pieces—spirituals, distinguished from blackface minstrelsy. The Japanese attitude toward African Americans at this initial stage was a mixture of pity and wonder. A growing self-awareness of Japan’s inferior status vis‐à‐vis Western nations, however, gave rise to a strong interest in slavery and racial oppression. The popularity of studies focused on American race problems since 1905, including multiple versions of the biography of Booker T. Washington, attests to prewar intellectuals’ attempt to define the position of the Japanese people by both analogy and contrast with African Americans. In the meantime, a partial translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), serialized from 1897 to 1898 in a liberal paper, the Kokumin, and a translation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) in 1921 paved the way for Japan’s introduction to the New Negro literature, the first major body of black writings gaining in popularity in the American literary market in the 1920s. Successive publications of works by W. E. B. DuBois, Walter White, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and Langston Hughes in translation in the 1930s generated a distinctive artistic backdrop comparable to the American Jazz Age. Various authors of the era—from novelists to haiku poets—learned about literary motifs informed by blackness and began to elaborate their own racial representations to delineate the affectional substructure of modernity. Even though World War II briefly disrupted the expansion of the Japanese literary imagination through the creative inspiration of African Americans, a translation of Richard Wright’s Native Son within the year of the original publication (1940) signifies the persistence of interest throughout the war period. Indeed, defeat in 1945, resentment over the subsequent U.S. occupation, coincident remorse for their country’s imperial aggression, and anger at its eventual rearmament following the Korean War, in conjunction, reoriented postwar authors toward the development of black characters in diverse works over the following four decades. In addition, the civil rights movement facilitated studies in African-American literature in universities from the 1960s onward. Today, African-American literature is one of the most popular areas in English departments in Japan; one can find virtually every subject from the slave narrative to rap music in undergraduate course syllabi.

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